Two young persons from the Rights of the Child Commission (RCC) and Youth Media Guyana (YMG) represented Guyana at a recent UNICEF sponsored workshop in Brazil and made presentations on youth and adolescent participation in education policies and youth participation using new information and communication technologies.
According to a press release from the RCC, Stefan Farier and Neketa Forde represented Guyana at the workshop held under the theme ‘Adolescent and Youth Civic Participation’ held between December 10 and 13.
The workshop was part of the self-managed activities of the Global Human Rights Forum and saw 130 participants from 12 countries which included adolescents, young people, policy makers, leaders of social movements, student leaders and other stakeholders developing programmes and policies aimed at ensuring the right to participation of young people.
The release said that Farier, who was the prime minister of the assembly of the children’s parliament in 2011 for RCC explained through his presentation the selection process RCC took for bringing together children from 11 educational administrative regions in Guyana to participate in the forum.
The forum was developed by the late President Janet Jagan and reintroduced by the RCC. During his presentation, Farier also made mention of a few constraints in the selection process and the way recommendations are dealt with in the National Assembly.
He said despite the constraints, the experience gained for all participants was priceless as it empowered them to be better persons. In her presentation Forde said that YMG is an award winning youth led organization dedicated to creating an avenue for youth expression through various forms of ICTs and multimedia, thereby empowering youth to advocate for their rights.
According to the RCC release, the participation of young people has been recognised by international legal documents on specific instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN,1989) and in many other human rights treaties relating to women’s rights, protection against discrimination, and the guarantee of civil and political rights.
The UNICEF, UNFPA and UNHABITAT offices in Brazil, the Youth Coordination of the Government of the Federal District, and the National Youth Secretariat organised the recent workshop as a space for debate, exchange of experiences, and ideas and knowledge for the sharing on civic participation of young people with the objectives to:
Identify and systematize a framework for the participation of young people based on international norms, legislations and institutions of countries;
Give visibility to public policies that ensure the participation of young people in decision-making fora regarding the realization of their rights;
Share experiences of participatory processes led by young people;
And create space for youth expression on innovative processes of participation, social mobilization and use of new information technologies and communication.
Meantime, the release said that representatives from RCC and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports participated in several workshops at the World Forum of Human Rights.
Some workshops attended representative include: Human Traffick-ing for Sexual Purposes: A Latin-American Reality; Strategies towards Dev-elopment and Strategies to Fight Racism; Child Labour: Violation of Human Rights of Children and Adolescents; Access to Socioeconomic Data for Social Control of Public Policies; Human Rights of Adolescents in conflict with their law and criminality and the launching of the manual Understanding Human Rights; and on 12th December, 2013 Human Rights of Adolescents in Conflict with their Law and Criminality followed by the launch of the manual Understanding Human Rights.
